by Tony Park
*
Henri Bousson studied the picture on Carmel’s iPhone and she looked over his shoulder at the image of the white man in the group for the first time.
The man had blond hair. Although he was wearing a khaki-coloured civilian safari suit he had the hard eyes, straight bearing and muscled arms of a military man. He was holding the weapon that Richard had said was a surface-to-air missile launcher.
Henri sucked a breath in through his teeth, then shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t recognise any of these people. There were plenty of gun runners in Rwanda and the neighbouring countries in those days, though – they’re still there today. Someone is always killing someone else in that part of Africa.’
Carmel took the phone and had another look. There were other investigators in Kigali, locals as well as foreigners, who could try to identify the men in the picture. It was important enough, apparently, for someone to kill to try to keep the image, and the testimony of those who had been there when it had been taken, away from the tribunal. She wondered what she should do about Liesl and Richard. The irony of her position – that she should find herself responsible for the safety of two people she’d once wanted to shoot – didn’t escape her.
‘I could help you identify them, I think.’
She looked up from the phone’s screen. ‘How?’
*
Vite wiggled and jiggled the wooden peg with his fingers until his long arm ached from being stretched for so long. He shook the peg some more and when he pulled, this time, it started to move.
Vite paused, all of his senses alert for the sound of the man returning. When he was certain all was quiet he slid the loosened peg from its metal home. He pushed against the cage door and it squeaked. Vite paused again. When no one answered the rusty cry he pushed the door all the way open and climbed down. His cage was sitting on another and when the cobra inside it reared up and hissed at him, Vite’s little heart nearly exploded from his chest. Had he known he’d been sitting atop a snake for so many days, he might have died of fright.
He scampered along the dirt floor of the prison to the steel door where the man came and went to check on his captives. Vite pushed the door. It wouldn’t budge.
Vite banged on the metal and to his surprise it started to open. He thrust his hand through the gap at the edge, into the shaft of light that pierced the gloom, but before he could squeeze out he felt hands grabbing his arm. He was lifted off the ground and when the door opened fully he found himself staring at a white man.
The white man spoke to Vite’s captor in an angry tone. Vite wriggled and struggled, but he was no match for the two humans. They carried him not back to his cage, but to a wooden box on the floor. He kicked at the sides and tried to grab the timbers to stop them putting him inside, but they beat down on his hands and forced him in. Vite squealed as the lid was nailed shut. He felt himself lifted and saw cracks of light between the slats of the box as he was carried outside and the box was dropped on something that clanged. An engine started. Vite felt himself moving, further and further from his home.
*
Aston’s mobile phone vibrated in his top pocket. The woman opposite him was worried that a workmate, a former close friend whom she had fallen out with, had placed a curse on her which was preventing her from falling pregnant.
Aston had just prescribed a root infusion to help her conceive, but the woman was now complaining about a hacking cough, tiredness and night sweats. He could hardly tell her to go have sex with a virgin, as that cure for AIDS didn’t work with women.
‘It’s probably nothing – just a tummy bug or a virus. Perhaps something you ate?’ Aston said.
The woman nodded vigorously and looked relieved. ‘Yes, I am sure that is it, Doctor. Thank you so much.’
‘It is only a pleasure,’ he said, and stood to end the consultation. The woman stood and opened her handbag. ‘Please, pay my receptionist on the way out. I am sure you will be fine and that you will soon be coming back to me to report your good fortune.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’
The phone had stopped vibrating. As Aston closed the door he slipped the phone from his pocket. The number of the missed call was withheld, which was normal in this line of business. Aston waited. The phone rang again.
‘Yes?’
‘The Englishman went to the woman’s parents’ farm in Letsitele. He’s there now,’ said the man Aston knew as Jan Venter. It was no doubt an alias, but that was fine. Jan was ex-South African special forces, a close friend of the boss and very good at his job, whether that was reconnaissance and surveillance, or killing. Aston had no doubt that had he sent Jan to kill the photographer and the doctor they would not be alive, but it would have been too much of a risk. South Africa might be, in theory, the rainbow nation where all colours lived side by side and race didn’t preclude or guarantee access to any job, but the fact was that carjackers and home-invading drug addicts tended to be black rather than white. Had Jan failed in the spectacular way that Aston’s other two would-be assassins had failed, there would have been a good deal more police interest in the two attempted murders than there was currently. Aston was using Jan to gather intelligence and oversee the surveillance of the two targets who were, somewhat embarrassingly, still alive.
‘We know that she keeps her photographic files at her parents’ home. By now she will have found the picture and printed it,’ Aston said. He was fishing. He wanted to hear how the white man would tackle the problem.
‘This isn’t some poor Afrikaner farming family. There will be computers in the house . . . a scanner. She will have sent the image to the people who want it. It’s too late,’ Jan said.
‘Maybe yes, maybe no,’ Aston said, his mind racing. ‘It is not good that things have progressed this far, but we cannot afford to fail.’
‘You can’t afford to fail,’ Jan said.
‘The man and the woman are as important as the picture – their testimony is what makes the photo so crucial.’
‘You’re talking about a big operation. The parents would have been shown the picture, perhaps been told what the man and woman know. If we want to contain the damage we need to go large, hey?’
‘I’m not sure I follow you,’ Aston said.
‘Oh, I think you do. Farm invasions happen every day in South Africa, and they’re bloody.’
Aston thought about the fallout that would occur from murdering a wealthy farming couple, as well as their daughter and the doctor. It would be big, but manageable. ‘There’s no way you could make it look like an accident?’
Jan laughed into the phone. ‘Four people? Fokken big accident, bru. The man and woman went into the family game park today. Might have been able to finish them off and feed them to the old man’s lions or wild dogs, but accident . . . no.’
Aston’s eyes widened. ‘Did you say wild dogs?’
‘Ja,’ Jan said. ‘I’ve been doing my homework. There was a piece in the local paper a month ago about the old man adopting a pack of twelve wild dogs. Crazy oke. Where I grew up we used to shoot those bladdy –’
‘Shut up. Keep the place under surveillance, I have another job for you.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I want those wild dogs. All of them. Alive.’
There was a silence on the end of the line and Aston wondered if the signal had dropped out. ‘Serious?’
‘You heard me. The dogs.’
More silence. ‘Ja, OK, but it’ll cost you. I’ll need drugs, dart guns, that sort of thing. I can’t put an operation like this together tonight.’
‘You’ve got two days. I know a vet in the Lowveld and I’ll SMS his number to you.’
‘And the family? The man and the woman?’
‘Go large,’ Aston said. ‘If you get a chance to take out the man and the woman before we get the dogs, then take it.’
‘Ja, all right. I want a hundred thousand for the lot,’ Jan said.
‘Rand?’
Jan
laughed into the phone. ‘Dollars. US.’
‘Fifty,’ Aston said.
‘Seventy-five thousand, no less.’
‘Deal. But when it comes time to clean the farm, I want you to do it. I can’t afford any more failures. The boss is watching us all.’
‘With me, failure is not an option. That’s why the boss sent me to help you,’ Jan said.
Aston hung up and tried to calculate how much he could charge for a dozen wild dogs. Anything he wanted, he guessed. A pack that big must include pups and he could charge a premium for the little ones. But the dogs, no matter how lucrative, were his secondary concern.
As Jan said, the Nel woman’s parents would know some of the story of the photo by now, and the image itself would have already been emailed. He could probably stop the picture going further if he acted quickly. He typed a quick email into his computer then picked up his phone again. It was time to put the contingency plan into action.
He dialled a man he knew in Livingstone, Robert Banda, another ex-soldier, down on his luck. The man had poached rhino in Hwange National Park, across the Zambezi in Zimbabwe, and had boasted that he’d killed a park ranger.
It was short notice, but when the call finally went through, on the third attempt, the man said he was available and would happily do the job for the two thousand US dollars Aston offered. He was so staggered at the amount that he didn’t even think to bargain it upwards.
*
Carmel sipped her coffee as Henri explained how he might be able to help her identify the men in the picture. He said that from the look of the thick vegetation in the background the picture had probably been taken either near the Virunga Mountains or Nyungwe National Park.
‘I know both areas well. As I said, my parents made their fortune growing tea, at Gisokoro near the Nyungwe Park, and we were regular visitors to the Volcanoes National Park. I actually met Dian Fossey when I was a boy.’
‘Really?’ Carmel was impressed.
‘Yes. My father was in Ruhengeri on tea business and we met her in a bar. She gave my father an earful about growing tea, and he agreed to make a donation towards her research. I think she would have thrown it back in his face if it wasn’t so generous!’
Carmel laughed, as did Henri. ‘That’s good, but I still don’t know how you can help identify the men.’
‘Not me, but perhaps people I know, still living and working in the national parks. Before the situation deteriorated, I worked for a few years as a guide in both parks. It’s where my love for wildlife began. I used to escort foreign researchers into the remote areas, even though there were few who made it to Rwanda, and fewer still who stayed once the fighting became more intense. We had farms around Ruhengeri as well, and my father would send me to check on them. There was a lot of illegal cross-border traffic at the time, from Uganda and Zaire, as it was known then. There were animals – gorillas and chimps – being killed for bushmeat and their babies sold as pets, but there were also arms shipments coming and going. Some of the whites I knew back then were involved in both trades. It was shameful.’
‘You think you might still have some contacts there?’
He shrugged ‘Maybe. Ruhengeri was a strong base of Hutu Power, the movement that whipped people into a genocidal frenzy against the Tutsis. As you would know, Hutu Power had the backing of the Rwandese Army, so it could be that the military men in your picture were meeting in that area, near the mountains where the gorillas live. It’s remote, and on the route to and from Zaire.’
‘Well, I have very few leads to go on. We should talk about this more,’ Carmel said.
He nodded. ‘But now I think it is time for bed.’
‘You’re right,’ she said, thankful for his thoughtfulness.
Henri stood and walked over to a side wall and pushed some buttons on the house’s alarm system. From a side table beneath the alarm box he took a rechargeable torch. ‘I’ll show you to your room.’
*
Robert Banda rubbed the infusion of crushed leaves and roots into the skin of his chest and belly, then smeared some on his cheeks and the top of his shaven head for good measure.
Doctor Aston had prescribed the muti to him two years earlier, when the inyanga had visited Livingstone to collect the rhino horn Robert and his brother had taken from an animal in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. Aston had said the muti would protect him from rangers’ bullets on his future forays.
And it had worked. The next time Robert had ventured into Zimbabwe, to hunt for buck in the Zambezi National Park on the other side of the river, he and his brother had been surprised by a foot patrol of rangers. His brother had foolishly brandished his handgun, a Browning 9mm pistol, and the rangers had opened fire. Robert’s brother had been killed, but Robert himself had been unharmed, because he had used the muti. He’d taken his dead brother’s pistol and fled, making it back to Zambia.
He checked the pistol in the moonlight, in the yard of his small house. He slid back the slide and let it go, chambering a round. It reminded him of his days in the army, under Aston’s command. It was good to hear from the big man again and to be trusted with such an important job. He would not let the doctor down. He slid the pistol into the waistband of his jeans, then took out his green parka and put it on back to front. Robert got onto his Yamaha 125cc motor scooter and kicked the starter. It took him three attempts to get it going. He would buy a new bike with the money he was about to earn. It would better suit his image as a gangsta. Women would love it. Robert pulled on his helmet and let out the clutch. The bike puttered and chugged, but sounded better when he revved the throttle hard.
He left Livingstone and headed out towards the Mosi-Oi-Tunya National Park. He knew the house where the Frenchman lived, as his mother still lived in the village nearby. Several years earlier, when the Frenchman was building his mansion on the river, Robert had worked as a construction labourer. He had mixed cement for the bricks that had built the sprawling entertainment area and the attendant suites. He knew the Frenchman’s living quarters were on the eastern side of the property, and the guest bungalows were on the far side of the living area. This was the side he would enter from, via the creek that the Frenchman and his white woman neighbour had stupidly left open to the river, creating an elephant highway.
Robert didn’t want to be remembered by the Zambian Wildlife Authority guards on duty at the entry to the park, so he turned off the road onto a dirt trail before the ZAWA checkpoint. Half a kilometre further on was a turn-off that led to the road that ran along the park fence. Robert turned left and motored slowly until he came to the gap where the fence had been cut and the wire mesh flattened. It was a well-known entry spot for the men who set their snares in the park.
Robert turned off the engine, got off the bike and pushed and lifted it through – grateful for once that the machine was so puny. Once through he started it again and followed the fence until he came to one of the game-viewing roads. He knew there was little likelihood of encountering a ZAWA patrol this late at night. If he did, he had his pistol. The mix of excitement and fear emboldened him, and he gunned the engine. On the far side of the park he found a similar break in the fence and repeated the procedure. Soon he was back on the tar road, having successfully evaded both checkpoints.
Robert slowed as he neared his mother’s village, not because he wanted to see her but because of the huge dark shapes ambling across the road, blotting out the stars in the process. He stopped and revved his engine. One of the elephants paused and looked at him, shaking her great head so that her big ears flapped noisily.
He felt his heartbeat quicken. He hated these animals. They were off to feed on the crops the people in his mother’s village grew. They would trample and gorge on the food that was meant for the humans. If Robert had been armed with an AK, instead of the pistol, he would have killed the big matriarch then and there, and hacked out her skinny tusks. Instead, he waited, holding his breath, until the old cow led her clan across the road and into the b
ush on the other side.
The Frenchman was part of the problem, Robert thought as he cruised past the entrance to the man’s property. All the people of his mother’s village knew that the reason the elephants were able to get to their crops so easily was because of the unfenced corridor along the creek line that separated the Frenchman’s property from his neighbour’s. Robert would have liked to have killed the Frenchman as well, but orders were orders. It wasn’t unusual to hear gunshots at night – people sometimes fired a shot or two to scare away elephants – but if the man was woken by the shot and came out of his suite and saw him, then Robert would have to shoot him in self-defence. Aston would understand.
Robert eased the bike onto the dirt verge and stopped the engine. He wheeled the bike ten metres into the bush and laid it down in the long summer grass so that it would be invisible from the road. He took off his parka – it was warm now that he had stopped riding – and placed it over the bike as an extra covering. He touched the butt of the pistol for luck, and imagined the bulletproof field radiating from his body, thanks to Aston’s muti. This would be better than killing a rhino or an elephant. If the woman was sleeping he might try to smother her with a pillow rather than shooting her. Perhaps there would be time for him to have some fun. The thought excited him.
He slid down the steep bank of a cutting made by a creek that fed to the Zambezi and smelled the pungent odour of fresh elephant dung. Yes, this was where they had crossed and passed through. Robert walked along the edge of the trickling stream, hopping from rock to rock when he could, and trying not to lose his shoes to sucking mud when he had to step onto the softer ground. He scanned the sky, looking for a suitable tree.
As he’d hoped, the mzungu’s staff had been lax in pruning the higher branches of the taller trees that ran along the fence line. There was the occasional report of a leopard in the area, but Robert imagined the white man wouldn’t be too worried at all if one of the cats was able to climb a tree, then walk along a branch that overhung the electric fence and jump into the protected compound. A white person would probably welcome such an invasion. A villager would lament the loss of a goat or a dog, and then set a trap to kill the leopard. Robert found a suitable jackalberry, climbed it, crawled along the branch, then, hanging from it by his hands to lessen the distance to the ground, let go and landed softly in the grass. All the mzungu with houses and lodges on the river had boats too, for game viewing and fishing, so Robert planned on making his escape via the water. The outboard might be locked away, but he could drift with the current until he found a jumping-off place, then circle back for his motorcycle. He had thought of everything.
